National Cat Day! Happy 10th Birthday to my cats!

October 29 is National Cat Day - and my fur babies turned 10 at the beginning of September so here's a little timeline of my babies from ~8 weeks to present.

I think one of the computer crashes wiped a bunch of pictures so I can only find one (ONE! *sob*) picture of the boys as fuzzy little babies in October 2003.

They were so tiny - barely bigger than my hand.  I took this picture the night I got home from the farm where they were born (it was raining like mad, cold, and my friend's elderly father had to come shoot a possum that had got into the barn).

But they adapted to their cushy indoor cat life well and soon started getting into all sorts of trouble like getting stuck under the dishwasher rack.

 And getting stuck in items meant for the recycling.

And had $1500 worth of abdominal surgery for an intestinal blockage as a result of eating thread (and other things on top of that including the spare wire for the mandoline cheese slicer - which was radiopaque, thank god) and then more charges for his wound infection because he licked the incision (the vet didn't make him wear a cone).  Chaucer-kitteh still (STILL) tries to eat strings and ribbons.  He doesn't learn.






And gained a lot of weight.  At his heaviest, the Dante-kitteh weighed 18 pounds.  We're around 13 pounds now, which is much better, and I get to laugh about his poochy little tummy.  It is the cutest.

It helped that I moved to a split-level so they had to learn about (very scary!) things like stairs.  When one has to go up and down the stairs to eat, use the cat box, and sleep on the nice, warm bed you get lots of exercise.  When we first moved, they refused to go downstairs without me for the first few days - they would sit at either the top or bottom and cry for me to come and walk with them.

They're about the most adorable, annoying things ever.  Chaucer is very good at begging (see left).  Dante knows exactly which drawer in the fridge contains the cheese - which is a favorite kitty treat - and comes running when he hears it open.

They drag their favorite toys all over the house and into bed while I'm sleeping (Chaucer likes to carry his around like a baby and make weird "mrower" noises).  They love to snuggle and can purr like a diesel engine.














They get into just about anything I'm doing - working, knitting, reading, etc etc etc.  They were the subjects of my most popular blog post for a while - "Die Katzen sind nicht amüsiert" - which expressed why they don't like spam comments.

Chaucer has become the more photo-ready of the two - he's a bit better at staying still while keeping his cute facial expression.

But Dante has his moments, too (his little face is getting whiter/graying, which makes me sad).

He is obsessed with the kitteh who lives in the mirror.  All the mirrors.
















Also, we are extremely vocal when we want something.  Like when I'm having supper and Chaucer-kitteh would like some, too - he sits at the table and meows incessantly.

I love them so much.  Which is why I spent a good 20 minutes taking pictures/video of them with their new catnip hedgehog and green-frog-with-tail (?) toys because they were so funny.

Happy 10th birthday Chaucer and Dante!!

Happy National Cat Day everyone!














ETA: Plz send treats.  Don't tell mommy.

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